Crescent Beach hunt, Vancouver lower mainland

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Just a little post of my 1st day out with the Garrett Infinium LS.

Only 2 clad coins, a 2010 Canadian Quarter and a 1974 Canadian Penny.

Lots of bottle tops, loud signals, the rusty ones sound a bit warbly on the low part of the high-low tone. Lots of pulltabs, really scratchy on low part of high-low tone. The spoon nearly deafened me! :duh:
The spoon is marked stainless steel, made in China. But its rusting in the spoon bowl, so I question the stainless part!

Gonna go back and watch Oldebeechnut's Infinium videos again. Gotta tune my ear for those tones. All in all a good 2hr hunt, now both arms are SORE and my upper back is aching. But I'll get stronger!

GL & HH!!

 

[Fishers Ghost]

TheGeorgiaCanuck

You could have a look at the Australian Infinium Forum as it is getting a bit of the previously lost Infinium information back up after a bad re start.
This is the link to the Forum index page and not a link to a commercial site. I donot know of any other way of putting up a link to this particular Infinium Forum.

However if Admin deem this link to be Commercial then would they please delete this post.

http://www.goldminingcentre.com.au/Forum/index.php

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Got it. Thanks!

 

[ivanll]

This forum alone have 24 pages of various info on how to with the Infinium LS back to June 2008, there is not much more to say without repetition no matter which forum one might be lead to.

Best way is what you are doing, get the feel of the Infinium and practice,........ practice,...... read,....... watch and learn.

We who are still with an Infinium LS all did our learning the tedious way,................... although some have made attempt on short cuts and got nowhere faster.

ivanll

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Yep I've been going over the forum posts for the last 3 days. I do have some questions though. Since I have not found any rings yet. I'm curious to know some things.

1. Pull tabs. they give me a high-lo signal, but on the lo signal return is sounds rough or scratchy. Is this normal for pull tabs, or do rings do the same? Or do rings give clean signals like some coins?
Found a Canadian Quarter today and the signal was hi-lo, loud and clean. it was down about 2" in sand.

2. Beer bottle tops. I find they give a loud signal, but get scratchy too on the lo part of the signal, alot more if they are rusty.
I've not seen any posts mentioning the scratchy or rough sounds on the lo part of a high-lo tone. Or am I imagining this?

3. Also I was just reading on the Australian forum about the tones. Adrian SS said, "If your signal is a STRONG HI/Lo in Normal and is equally strong HI/LO in Rev Disc then TID is likely to be rusty iron."
Well I had a totally different return on rusty iron nails today. I got a Strong hi-lo return, then in rev disc I got a weak hi-lo. I dug it and bam, rusty nail. That was wierd.

 

[Fishers Ghost]

I have not noticed any scratchness on the lo tone with the standard Garrett HPs.
With some wide frequency response HPs there can be some odd low burrping type sounds at the end of the lo tone.
Yes the nail when rusty can produce tones very similar to gold. The discrimination on the infinium is far from perfect but generally speaking, clean iron nails will give a lo/hi tone in both normal and rev disc and the rev disc tone will usually be just slightly weaker than in normal, it can vary depending on how the nail or target is positioned in the ground.
when the iron is thick with rust the tone can become hi/lo in both normal and rev disc. and sound like gold.
Steel bottle caps that give a strong hi/lo in normal, often almost disappears in rev disc whereas a gold ring that gives a strong signal, which can be either hi/lo or lo/hi depending on the purity of the gold in normal, will still be heard easily in rev disc as a hi/lo but still significantly weaker than the normal mode tone. Small gold will disc out totally in rev disc but as you dig down and get the coil closer to the target the tone will be heard as a hi/lo in Rev Disc.
You need to practice on a lot of different targets in order to get the hang of the Infinium, and remember that the Rev Disc is primarily designed to separate iron from gold in highly iron mineralised ground conditions. Trying to use it to ID other metals is possible but not very reliable.

Any target that produces a signal that reduces conciderably when switching from normal to Rev Disc should always be dug and any target that is HI/LO in Rev Disc at a reduced signal level than in Normal has a strong posibility of being gold and should always be dug. If you don't dig the Rev Disc HI/LOs you will be leaving gold in the ground.

None of this is hard and fast and Set In Stone, it is all just a general guide, you need to find out for yourself how your machine responds in the areas that you hunt.

You can use the disc to find out where certain target types drop out or change tones and this may help give an approx guestimate as to what type of target you have detected. As I said, you need to practice on a lot of different targets.

Remember to sweep slowly and overlap your sweeps and I can say for sure you will soon be finding very deep targets with this machine.

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

I agree I need alot of practice, but I was trying to dig everything to learn the sounds. Unfort this beach is like 6cm of wet sand, then a layer of rocks. then black muddy sand. I need a serious long handled stainless steel beach tool. Mines short handled with a welded wire basket atm and no kickplate for the foot. Bit tough on digging, and I did have some signals below the round half fist sized and smaller rock layer. I did notice alot of falsing right where the waves lap the shore, just like on oldebeechnuts infinium video(one of them) I couldnt ground balance it out completely.

 

[Fishers Ghost]

The Infinium sometimes needs a bit of Disc dialed in to eliminate salt ( varies from beach to beach) after you have ground balanced with the disc at zero.
If you set the disc higher than 3 you will start to reduce the response to gold. Always remember to set the disc to zero before you geound balance.

 

[Fishers Ghost]

HI TheGeorgiaCanuck,

Thanks for pointing that glitch out in the Aussie Inf Forum re the rusty nail, the post has been corrected although a bit further down in the post a mention was made as to how the HI/LO in Rev Disc for rusty iron can be at a reduced strength..
At a certain increase in size, rusty iron target tones will change to LO/HI and it is something you are going to have to find out for yourself as so much depends on the mineralisation of the ground and the type of target. You will dig a lot of trash for a while with the Infinium but as you become acustomed to the detector your good target ratio to bad will improve out of sight.

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Had a really short hunt today testing my hip waders. I had this signal: If your signal is a STRONG LO/HI in Normal and almost equally STRONG LO/HI in Rev Disc then TID is likely to be a tent peg or coat hanger or some similar clean iron item.

Believe me, I dug at this signal underwater for 15mins, and it was...tah-dah...."WIRE"

So How does a silver ring or jewlery sound off on rev discrim? reduced lo-high? Like the silver nuggets respond that Jim Hemmingway posted on his silver nugget hunting with the Infinium? or can they also go the other way?
A solid hi-lo signal in zero discrimination, and a much quieter hi-lo signal in reverse discrimination??

Thanks

 

[Fishers Ghost]

Had a really short hunt today testing my hip waders. I had this signal: If your signal is a STRONG LO/HI in Normal and almost equally STRONG LO/HI in Rev Disc then TID is likely to be a tent peg or coat hanger or some similar clean iron item.

Believe me, I dug at this signal underwater for 15mins, and it was...tah-dah...."WIRE"

So How does a silver ring or jewlery sound off on rev discrim? reduced lo-high? Like the silver nuggets respond that Jim Hemmingway posted on his silver nugget hunting with the Infinium? or can they also go the other way?
A solid hi-lo signal in zero discrimination, and a much quieter hi-lo signal in reverse discrimination??

Thanks

Short answer to your last question......Yes

High purity sil 0.999 will mainly be LO/HI in both modes with the Rev Disc being noticably weaker (A bit like clean soft iron wire, coat hangers and sparkler wire) which is a pain, but as I said, the wire and bobby pins generally give little, choppy or no signal in one direction of the sweep.

.925 sil can be Lo/Hi in normal and a redused HI/LO in rev disc and some sil can be both HI/LO in norm and rev disc with the rev disc being noticably weaker. it depends on what is alloyed with the silver.

So to recover high grade sil go for the LO/HI tones that are LO/HI in Rev Disc at a reduced strength to that in Normal. you will wind up with a lot of iron wire etc but will not miss the good silver,

To recover all sil dig everything that is a solid repetable signal.

To find gold dig everything that is HI/LO in rev disc at a reduced sig strength to the normal mode or that disappears completely no matter what the tones.
are. I have not found any gold that gives a LO/HI in Rev Disc.

OR do what I do which is dig all targets and to blazes with the Discrimination on any detector. and at the end of the days detecting go back to a couple of those targets that you left in the ground coz yer back was sore, and dig em up, you just never know what might be there. Doing that has paid off for me on a number of occasions.


Jim H has the Infinium and silver down to a fine art and his posts are chock a block with good info.

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Btw I'm still waiting for my account to be activated on the Australian site. Till then I can't see the good posts

""If your signal is a STRONG HI/LO in Normal and the signal disappears in Rev Disc then the TID is probably a steel bottle cap.""

So even if bottle caps disappear in rev discrim, I should still dig it, it MIGHT be a gold ring?

Since the Australian forum seems to cover nuggets on the tips part I can read I don't know if its different than gold rings. Sorry if I'm asking too many questions.


P.S. I don't know if I'm describing this right, but have you noticed some signals just seem "CLEAN" compared to others? Rusty bottlecaps have this fuzzy sound on the LO part of the Hi-Lo and pulltabs seem fuzzy or seem to growl on the lo tone.

The Canadian quarter I found yesterday was a CLEAN dinger. No growl or fuzzy at all....I'm wondering if rings would sound clean or not. Or is my machine just making sounds different than yours?

OR is the choppy signal you described what I'm hearing, I heard ALOT of tones in one direction both days as well. I just ignored those, figuring it was falsing in the salt water.

 

[Fishers Ghost]

Quote:
""If your signal is a STRONG HI/LO in Normal and the signal disappears in Rev Disc then the TID is probably a steel bottle cap.""

So even if bottle caps disappear in rev discrim, I should still dig it, it MIGHT be a gold ring?


The key to the above quote is "STRONG HL/LO"

If the signal is a STRONG hi/lo and it disappears in rev disc it is unlikely to be gold but if the signal was still quite audible but clearly weaker then the target might be gold.

By strong I mean almost max volume, the sort of signal you might get from a coin just 3 or 4 inches from the coil.

Some bottle caps do sound of strong in both modes due to certain plating materials and that is another reason why you should practice with as many commonly lost or discarded items at the beach that you can lay your hands on, it is the only way to latch on to what the Infinium is telling you. Either that or dig all targets for a while in varying ground conditions or if you just detect the beaches then that is where to practice.

Quote:
P.S. I don't know if I'm describing this right, but have you noticed some signals just seem "CLEAN" compared to others? Rusty bottlecaps have this fuzzy sound on the LO part of the Hi-Lo and pulltabs seem fuzzy or seem to growl on the lo tone

I don't know what to make of this .
I have only ever noticed odd eratic (Fuzzy) low tones when using non garrett HPs.

If you are getting long low or hi tones at the end of the sweep as the coil changes direction for the return sweep then generally that means that your GB is still not quite right or the salt is still having an effect on the detector. Re do your GB or try a slightly higher disc setting or even no disc, experiment a bit.

Often on a beach the salt and black sand mineralisation chops and changes up and down the beach so you may have to reset the disc setting every now and again. Also make sure that there is no elec interference which if not compensated for can cause some random tones.

Long drawn out tones on a beach are almost always caused by salt mineralisation. Target tones are short and distinct.

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

""Quote:
P.S. I don't know if I'm describing this right, but have you noticed some signals just seem "CLEAN" compared to others? Rusty bottlecaps have this fuzzy sound on the LO part of the Hi-Lo and pulltabs seem fuzzy or seem to growl on the lo tone

I don't know what to make of this .
I have only ever noticed odd eratic (Fuzzy) low tones when using non garrett HPs.

If you are getting long low or hi tones at the end of the sweep as the coil changes direction for the return sweep then generally that means that your GB is still not quite right or the salt is still having an effect on the detector. Re do your GB or try a slightly higher disc setting or even no disc, experiment a bit.

Often on a beach the salt and black sand mineralisation chops and changes up and down the beach so you may have to reset the disc setting every now and again. Also make sure that there is no elec interference which if not compensated for can cause some random tones.

Long drawn out tones on a beach are almost always caused by salt mineralisation. Target tones are short and distinct"".
--------------------------------------------

Yea I don't know if I'm describing it right for you.
Lets try this scaling: Volume 1-10, high tone TAH, low tone DA, bz for the fuzzy/growl(more zz for longer growl)

Quarter was like volume(7) TAH-DA
Stainless steel spoon was volume(10) TAH-DA
Clean bottlecap was like volume(7-8 ) TAH-DAbz
Rusty bottlecap was like volume(5-6) TAH-DABZZZ
Wire which sounded like silver was volume(7) DA-TAH This one was under water.
Pulltab was like volume(4-5) TAH-DAbzz


Tell ya what, if I get out today or tomorrow I'll try and record those fuzzy parts for you on my digital camera video too.

What makes it harder is I live like on the 13th floor, no garden or lawn to bury stuff.
----------------------------
""Quote:

To find gold dig everything that is HI/LO in rev disc at a reduced sig strength to the normal mode or that disappears completely no matter what the tones.
are.""
----------------------------
Okay your reply earlier confused me.

So on any kind of gold I'll get a strong response and no matter what; the rev discrim should NOT make the sound disappear. or on some gold rings it WILL disappear on rev discrim?
Just making sure I"m clear on it.

------------------

I'll try re-ground balancing as well to see if that works, but this beach has quite a few trashy targets, its hard to find a "clean" spot to re-ground balance.
What mode do I ground balance in, slow or fast, or both?

What I usually do is, sit coil on beach, turn on detector to lock, wait 30sec. turn to slow, pump up and down slowly till sound levels out, change to lock. Start hunting.

 

[Fishers Ghost]

Your GB sounds to be ok, just be sure that you are not GB ing over a target.
The tones have got me beat; Maybe just go with the flow and use the fuzzy bits as an indicator to a possible TID

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Ok thanks Fishers Ghost.

Though could ya answer the gold question in my last post. I'm a bit confused on the rev discrim on gold based on your reply. Because I thought gold NEVER lost signal on rev discrim.

Quote "To find gold dig everything that is HI/LO in rev disc at a reduced sig strength to the normal mode or that disappears completely no matter what the tones are."

 

[ivanll]

Ok thanks Fishers Ghost.

Though could ya answer the gold question in my last post. I'm a bit confused on the rev discrim on gold based on your reply. Because I thought gold NEVER lost signal on rev discrim.

Quote "To find gold dig everything that is HI/LO in rev disc at a reduced sig strength to the normal mode or that disappears completely no matter what the tones are."

Rules, regulations and setup procedures Re. Infinium LS use are made by people, one can spend an awesome long time in trying to learn and follow all of them.

Nature do Not subscribe and follow our rules, so I do like nature and play it by ear, no fiddling with knobs and settings just listen to the audio Hi/Lo or Lo/Hi, and make a decision to dig or not.

Targets on the fringe of detection will be neither Hi/Lo or Lo/Hi merely a slight rise in threshold.
Targets on the fringe of detection while using a DD coil will give a slight rise in threshold in one direction only.
Some targets appearing as Lo/Hi with the Disc, at 0 (zero) can change to Hi/Lo by increasing the Disc. setting, reverse Disc. is based on changing the changeover point.

Was this little lump a Hi/Lo or a Lo/Hi, that would depend on the Disc. settings, type of coil used, coil sweep speed and coil distance above ground.........no matter the sound and feeling was sweet.:blush:

One will never learn and remember all the audio info that can be produced by the Infinium LS with different settings by different targets under all circumstances.

However some Infinium users take up the challenge, as for I it's well beyond my limit.

Ivanll

 

[TheGeorgiaCanuck]

Don't expect to learn EVERY sound

And I don't think this year I'll go looking for gold nuggets though. My questions was more about the sounds gold rings/jewlery makes. or silver. Fisher answered most of them, I just got confused on that last bit.

 

[ivanll]

The angle and surrounds of jewellery can and will change the the sound we hear the possibilities are infinite,......... but often jewellery is found alone.
Take two identical rings,(try pull taps) cut a split in one place uncut one in wet beach sand at the fringe of detection, place the one with a split in another hole at the same level both must be fully covered.

Let a few gentle waves roll over the diggings to level smoothly, you are likely to loose the split one, same with gold rings.

Sample: Targets that follow rule of nature.

ivanll

 

[Fishers Ghost]

PHew,
Thanks Ivanll, I was beginning to run out of puff.

TheGeorgiaCanuck,

Gold will always produce a weaker signal in Rev Disc, The amount that it weakens depends on how strong the original normal mode signal is, The size and purity of the gold, How deep it is, mineralisation and a few other things. The tone for gold in Rev Disc will ALWAYS be HI/LO at a reduced strength to the normal mode.
Just dig it all for a while mate until you have learnt the Infiniums language; And then after that you will have discovered that it is best to dig all targets because so many good gold and silver And Platinum items can give a crap metal signal